2166 - FORCE LIBERTY

by A. D. Bloom

  2166 - Force Liberty

  by A.D. Bloom

  ©2015

  The author would like to express his appreciation to the New England Air Museum, USS Nautilus (SSN-571), USS Massachusetts (BB-59), Evan C., /r/WarshipPorn, and /r/ImaginaryWarships.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  The Official Historical Record

  2164 - Humanity is attacked without provocation leading to the 'War of Alien Aggression'. Total victory is achieved by the end of 2165 and comes with the promise of Ortani Imperium reprisals against Humanity for the destruction of the Squidies' homeworld moon.

  2166 - As the new war begins, the combined Privateer and UN Fleet search for allies to aid them against the Imperium.

  1

  UNS Mako

  Beta Ceti

  The vessel lurked in the granulated plasma of the star's photosphere. Waves of electrified ions obscured it from moment to moment, crashing over it with every snapping spasm of Beta Ceti's magnetic lines. An ovoid energy field unlike anything Captain Bertrand had ever seen protected that ship inside a bubble of calm. He feared if it had the power to hold station so deep in the gravity well and produce a shield that could withstand the tortures of the stellar atmo, then it could shrug off the railguns and fission torpedoes carried aboard his UN frigate.

  Bertrand's executive officer, Pitmain, stood at the tactical console just to port and forward of the command chair. "Is that an Imperium ship?" Nobody in either fleet had seen one yet. The Ortani Imperium would be coming for revenge; that's all anyone knew. "I can't get a LiDAR or radar fix on it, but I estimate the vessel is at least fifteen kilometers from tip to tip." He gestured upwards and outwards from his console and projected a magnified image of the uncanny alien vessel two-meters high over the deck near the front of the bridge.

  Its towers stabbed in all directions. They were spires, kilometers high, piercing a central hull. As waves of denser plasma broke over the ship's protective shield, it didn't budge a meter.

  Bertrand said, "Are we authorized to attempt communication, Mr. Martins?"

  Martins, of UN Intelligence, manned a special diplomatic console added to the comms section of the frigate's bridge. In the ship's light gees, he nearly jumped out of his seat at the high-pitched shriek that erupted from his station. "That's not a communication!"

  "Our hull is getting charged!" Pitmain shouted over the almost cetacean sound of the energy playing over the arrays. "Some kind of...directed electromagnetic field line just connected to us. It looped out from the alien and lassoed us." I can see it...it's lighting up the plasma out there. He pointed out the windows at Beta Ceti, but less than a tenth of a second later, the burning veils of ionized gas between them and the alien ship tore apart and formed swirling wakes behind a glowing sphere hurtling out of the star at them. It was five kilometers wide.

  "Evasive maneuvers!"

  Over the next ninety seconds, the magnetic loop projected by the alien ship followed UNS Mako through the most evasive maneuvers the frigate could manage. The plasma weapon followed them with it. "We can't shake it!"

  As it rode the broad arc of the magnetic loop, chasing the fleeing frigate, the plasma spun and changed shape. It flattened and widened to a breaking disk and spun itself into a spiral that flew at them with ten curved arms like a little galaxy made of dense, million degree, electrified ions. Geysers of charged particles erupted from its poles in a howling, hourglass geyser.

  The frigate returned fire with railguns and Mk3 Warspite torpedoes, but he and his bridge crew never got to see their salvos land. "All hands, all decks, brace for impact."

  In the moment before it hit, the alien weapon lashed at the UN frigate with twisting, electrified filaments like the spray before a burning, five-kilometer wave. The kinetic energy smashed Mako's sleek, sturgeon-class hull and sent the UN frigate spinning like an arrow batted from the air. Her outer hull melted and vaporized almost instantly. The slim ship groaned and bent and then broke in the storm. Her inner hull burst. On the other side of the bridge's windows, the bodies blown out into the hellfire that surrounded them sublimed in an brilliant, flaring instant.

  For Captain Bertrand, internal shock waves, negative gees, and impact with the top bulkhead came next. It was like falling into soft pillows over and over. Darkness embraced him. Hot wind roared in his ears. There was numbing cold after that and tumbling. He heard a whistle inside his skull. Then, nothing.

  2

  SCS Hardway

  Three weeks later, on the edge of Earth-occupied space...

  Ram Devlin commanded the 950-meter attack carrier Hardway along with her wing of torpedo junks and fighters. Staas Company had promoted him to Commodore. He had some real power now and he planned to use it on the mission to Shedir 4 to make sure the next contact Humanity had with with alien life went better than first contact had with the Squidies.

  Already those hopes seemed dashed. When they told him about the diplomatic mission to Shedir, they never told him Staas Company's man would be coming along and giving him orders. Even worse, this was supposed to be a UN mission with a UN Special Envoy in charge and there was no clear reason for Anton Cyning to be there.

  Ram didn't trust the company man's motives. The UN hired Staas Company's Privateers for the extra firepower and scouting capabilities their carriers and air groups brought, but Anton Cyning's only stated role was to 'assure the security of company interests'.

  The company man's round face appeared no more than middle-aged; it was polished and smooth. He'd been gene-cut to look fifty years younger than he really was and never need a shave. Cyning had no history Ram could access. That meant the man had probably crawled up from the dark pit of the company's clandestine operations, the same fen of vipers that Ram knew had led humanity into the 'War of Alien Aggression'.

  "Commodore Devlin, do make sure my diplomatic console has priority over all other comms," Cyning said after rising from the seat at his new station. The modification required to add a second station and seat at the communications console had been minimal, but it made the company man's presence on Ram's bridge feel all too permanent. Ram swore if Cyning tried to take over his ship like Harry Cozen, he'd throw the Board of Directors' new darling out the airlock.

  Asa Biko said, "All your instructions have been followed, Mr. Cyning." Ram had needed an executive officer he could trust, someone the surviving crew already knew and respected. Asa Biko took the job. Now Biko's face was grimmer than ever because, along with everything else, a carrier XO's job is to worry.

  Dell Pardue was Hardway's new Air Group Commander. She was a veteran of the 2164-65 war, a pilot with ten years of experience, and keen to manage the air group's considerable firepower from the AT Controller's Console. At the bridge's starboard front side, she stood over her station jealously while she projected the new combat air patrol pattern into the air above for them to see. "We have a squadron of Sky Jacks and six gunnery junks flying the CAP for the transit, one with a long-range sensor package."

  "That's enough firepower on the patrol, Dell," Biko said from the Ops console next to the command chair. "But make sure you've got at least one of those interceptor flights on recon further ahead of the task force than normal. This is Imperium space we're heading into and we don't even know what their warships look like."

  Ram tried to get a better view of how Pardue had arranged the task force's protection, but Anton Cyning stoo
d between him and the projection and blocked him. Cyning turned and smiled with his lips pressed together. "I approve of your Air Group Commander's arrangement, Commodore."

  As the company man crossed the front of Ram's bridge and began to stick his nose into the NAV officer's station, the Ops console on Ram's right lit up with activity. "New contact," Biko said, "just coming around the limb of Beta Draconis now." On the out-of-scale display projected into the air above the Ops console, the armored teardrop that represented UNS Guerrero seemed to fly just above the licking flames of the star's corona. "It's the United Nations' newest battlewagon, "Biko said. "Fresh from the shipyards at Deimos Lagrange...UNS Guerrero."

  Ram projected a magnified image of her teardrop hull. Sixteen gargantuan railguns were hidden inside her, but coming right at them like that with all her gunports closed, almost all you could see of her was the armor of her domed bowplate. She looked more like a belt-iron steel moon than a ship. The gunports ringed her thick glacial shield and behind them the point defense guns bristled over the battleship's curving hull like hairs on a hog. The tops of her towers set at midships poked over the horizon of her hull. That ship represented the combined efforts of hundreds of thousands. It was human will manifested in belt-iron steel, built powerful enough to overcome any other will it might encounter.

  "The new Galleon class," he said. "It looks bigger up close."

  "She's got more armor than a battlestation and the biggest railguns ever mounted on a ship by a factor of five," said Cyning. "The UN still call themselves our diplomats, but that ship was made for destruction." The company man was right. True to her name, UNS Guerrero was made for war.

  She turned to port some fifteen degrees then and showed the hundreds of point defense guns like stubble up and down her. Aft, where the teardrop shape of the great ship had been abruptly truncated, her gargantuan engines spat a ghostly, thin river of pale blue plasma behind her.

  UNS Guerrero was 800 meters across the forward fat of her hull. When she finally held station 2Ks off Hardway's port side, Ram thought the UN captain might have parked extra close to his carrier in a conscious attempt to dwarf it.

  Ready Room

  Commodore Ram Devlin didn't like having to wait. Captain Chun Ye-Men of UNS Guerrero took his time getting to Hardway for the mission briefing. After that, Ram had to wait on a redsuit while he had the envoy, Anton Cyning and three ship's captains stuffed into the counter-surveillance cage that took up most of his ready room.

  The captains and VIPs in the cage had finished the scotch he'd given them by the time Tig Meester came through the hatch wearing a burnt red exosuit with his helmet under his arm. "Sorry."

  "You can get anywhere on this carrier in five minutes, Meester. Get in the cage."

  Ram closed the door to the outer and then inner cage and the multispectral noisemakers set on the bulkheads began to vibrate in a way that made everyone's teeth itch. Ram was glad to turn and see that the redsuit hadn't taken his seat. He nodded to the UN Special Envoy, the man officially in charge of the mission to Shedir 4. "We're all here now. Mr. Gilead, if you please."

  Wilhelm Gilead's bones stuck out everywhere on his suit. He spoke briskly. "For the Privateers here that don't know me, I'm Wilhelm Gilead. I'm in charge of this task force and the mission to Shedir 4. And if it were up to me not a single Staas Company ship would be going on the mission, but the Secretary General wishes that we include you to at least this degree. Why she insisted I meet with the Shediri aboard a private vessel rather than a UN craft, she refused to say. My complaints have gone unanswered. No offense, Captain Sellis."

  "None taken." The Taipan's young captain was too happy with her new command to let Gilead spoil it.

  "Taipan is, of course, a beautiful ship and I look forward to receiving the Shediri aboard her gilded decks. But. I feel I must reiterate that all of you Privateers will follow my orders at all times. This is a UN mission. Is that clear?" Heads bobbed, nodding, even if they looked a bit insulted he felt he had to say it. "Because of Staas company and Harry Cozen's secrecy, it was not until the very end of the last war that we understood the Squidies were operating as a local, colonial force - enforcers for the Ortani Imperium, a hegemony reputed to extend beyond our own galaxy. From what Commodore Devlin has reported, the Ortani Imperium have sworn vengeance upon us. We must assume that we represent a rebellious species within what they consider to be their domain. We are convinced that we have only a short time before they attempt to take revenge and assert their power visibly before the other species they have subjugated."

  Cyning said, "Does anyone have any idea yet what kind of forces they'll be sending?"

  "More colonial forces, we expect," Gilead said. "There's been no contact with them yet. As you know, we've been rebuilding the United Nations fleet almost as quickly as Staas Company is rebuilding its Privateer fleet, but we can't count on numbers to win. The rapid acquisition of alien technologies was a primary driver of victory in the last war and we must leverage it again."

  "And you're hoping the Shediri will give us technology?" Dana didn't sound convinced. "Why would they risk reprisals from the Imperium?"

  "If we understand the nature of the Ortani Imperium correctly, all its member species and their worlds are involuntary members, having been forced into accepting a treaty. They're routinely exploited for raw materials and under Imperium rule, they're only permitted the smallest of warships. Our defeat of the Imperium's local forces has undoubtedly caused our local neighbors to reassess what power the Imperium now holds over them. We're hoping our neighboring species will want to secede and form an alliance with us. But in order to have any realistic expectation of that, it is imperative we communicate to them we are not invaders or conquerors," Gilead said. "I like to think we're bringing them the opportunity for liberty. That's why I gave this task force its name."

  Captain Chun asked first. "How long have we been in contact with the..."

  "The Shediri," the UN envoy said. "They live on the fourth planet orbiting Shedir. Unknown to only a few at the UN, an operation to discretely contact alien intelligences has been underway for some time. In order to avoid the confusion of unscripted first contact, the fast frigates and breaching ships that were were dispatched were ordered to not make any contact themselves or even enter the systems known to be inhabited. Instead, they opened hypermass FTL transits from adjacent systems and sent diplomatic probes." Gilead glanced at Cyning and then Ram before the envoy spoke his next words as if they were meant for the pair of them. "We did not dare visit unannounced as it is the belief of the UN that we now have a reputation as a savage species."

  Cyning, the company man said, "The decision that the total destruction of the Squidies' homeworld moon was required in order to achieve a stable peace was a decision made by both the United Nations and Staas Company together, primarily for the disincentive it would provide for alien species to attack us again."

  "And now," Gilead said, "because of Humanity's collective barbarism, it's quite reasonable for our neighbors to be scared of us. So. Our mission to Shedir is twofold. Not only is our mission to open relations. It is also to show them that we will not, under any circumstances, force our will on them as the Imperium has done."

  "How did you get around the language barriers?" asked Captain Dana Sellis. "We barely learned to speak Squidy before...before the war ended." Before we killed them all, she meant.

  The envoy said, "We've created a simple, mostly literal comparative matrix of Human language concepts called Human_C. Using our limited knowledge of Squidy, we created a similar conceptual matrix and paired it with the other one to form a very limited Rosetta Stone, the Human_C / Squidy_C Translation Matrix. We sent it with the probe along with our brief message detailing the history of our war with the Squidies and conveying our desire to open relations. The probe sent to the Shedir system was intercepted and a message was sent back to us through the probe's q-linked comms module. It contained our language matrix with a third addition, Shedi
ri_C. The message from the Shediri included an invitation to visit with their very strict requirements - when to come, where to go, etc... They sent coordinates, quite specific coordinates where we are to land and meet. There will be a simple greeting ceremony on the planet to establish peace and trust, after which we will meet again to discuss mutual benefit and hopefully to lay the foundation for some kind of alliance. We must be careful not to present ourselves to the other species in our neighborhood as bullies to be feared. We must not pressure them in any way or appear to be invaders."

  "And the Shediri themselves? What exactly are they?" said Captain Chun of the battleship Guerrero. "UN Intelligence has told us nothing. We in the fleet, who most need to know." Chun's native tongue was Mandarin. He had no accent, but Ram was sure he heard Chinese cadence in the man's speech when the UN captain spoke English.

  "For security reasons, it was necessary to withhold all information until the present time." Gilead set his matchbox computer on the table and gestured upwards from it so a false-scale projection of the Shedir system appeared in the air around a ball of orange hellfire. "Shedir," he said. "Orange giant, thirteen planets, with a large habitable zone extending across the orbits of three of them. Most of the Shediri population is on the fourth planet." He enlarged it until the planet and its lurid, pink clouds was the size of a basketball. "Several moons orbiting a gas giant in the system are also centers of activity," he said as he brought the gas giant into view and enlarged its archipelago of moons. "It's the same species living there, mostly in orbital stations, but we think they evolved on the fourth planet. We have surmised from the oxygen, neon, nitrogen atmo on that planet that they probably use oxygen in their biological processes much like we do. Their planet is rocky in places, lush in others. Limited arid regions. Water oceans. You could breathe the atmosphere and not feel ill. Small planet. Local gravity is .22 gees. It has an unusually strong magnetic field."